Mardis Littéraires - Chris Lauer: "Gut verräumte Sternschnuppen"

Once or twice a month, on a Tuesday, the Cité Bibliothèque offers literary authors the opportunity to present their novels and read excerpts from their works followed by a Q&A and signing session.

Love and trauma are as closely linked as past and present in Chris Lauer's poetry collection. The panorama of desire, affection and rejection ranges from a tent party with drunken fists and staring doe eyes to the hope of healing together and a "kiss that resembled a handshake". Lauer writes openly about the difficulty of self-determined female sexuality. And as intimate as this volume begins, the zoom-out on the phenomena of a present characterised by violence, which Lauer captures in lines of verse with hypnotic language and a fascinating vocabulary, is overwhelming. The major themes shine through again and again. Like a painful barb, the poems interweave family history, the experiences of the Second World War on the side of the persecuted.
Then again, Lauer creates distance from the noise and chaos of the present and unrolls vast linguistic landscapes.